Trump’s talk of prosecution rattles election officials

DETROIT — Former President Donald Trump’s escalating calls to investigate and prosecute election officials he sees as “corrupt” are sounding alarms among democracy experts and the local and state workers preparing to run elections and tally millions of votes across the country.

In recent social media posts, Trump has said that election officials “involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” The November election, he added, “will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

On its face, the statements are promises to enforce the law. But coming from Trump, a politician who has repeatedly claimed to see corruption and fraud where there is no evidence of either and who as president pressured law enforcement officials to act on his complaints, the words raise the prospect that government officials could be investigated and prosecuted for conducting a fair election.

In his refusal to accept his defeat in 2020, Trump already has accused election officials of working against him, calling them out by name on social media and spreading falsehoods about their work.

Democracy experts said the talk of prosecution had troubling parallels. Such threats are far more likely in new nations, postcommunist states or places that are “struggling in the shadows between democracy and authoritarianism,” said Larry Diamond, who studies democracies around the world as a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“You won’t find instances in the contemporary world of a mature and stable and even faintly liberal democracy where a major presidential candidate is making these kinds of threats,” he said. “It’s just bizarre and unprecedented.”

In the United States, candidates from both parties have long publicly treated election officials as impartial, largely saving disputes about how an election was run for lawsuits. Trump’s steady complaints about his loss in 2020 have shredded that norm, opening up election officials to a flood of false allegations and threats of violence.

The threats carry extra weight as the country confronts scenes of political violence. On Sunday, there was a second assassination attempt on Trump, though he escaped unharmed. And on Monday, suspicious packages arrived at the offices of at least 15 election officials, prompting evacuations. (Investigations are ongoing.)

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state and a Democrat, said she had received more than 1,000 serious threats, including death threats, in the past year, part of an environment she attributes to comments from the former president. Since 2020, Trump has repeatedly claimed that his defeat was rigged by Democrats, although scores of courts, audits and investigations have proved him wrong.

Across the country, election officials have adapted to a hostile climate. Election offices have been outfitted with bulletproof glass and panic buttons, election officials say. Some officials have sought law enforcement protection for their homes around Election Day. They are training their staff on how to de-escalate tense situations and have shown videos about how election workers can address mental health concerns that stem from the pressures of their jobs.

But Trump’s comments about postelection prosecution spoke to a threat that is more difficult to prepare for and, for some, harder to contemplate.

In interviews with more than two dozen election officials, some of whom gathered at a conference in Detroit last week, several said they were more focused on getting through the election than worrying about being prosecuted afterward. Many said they believed the courts would protect them as long as they followed the law.

“In one respect I think, ‘Good luck,’” said Judd Choate, election director for the state of Colorado. “We live in the U.S., where you have to have a basis for incarcerating somebody. I don’t see it going anywhere, but it’s part of a larger strategy to create fear and reticence in election officials.”

Sara Tindall Ghazal, an election official in Georgia, said Trump’s post immediately reminded her of her time spent working as an election monitor in Liberia.

Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat, said she once received a warning in the days after an election there that the president’s special guard was raiding a radio station near her office. She quickly drove to check on her colleagues, but police pulled her over, she recalled.

“It was absolute sheer terror that I felt at the time, because I thought, ‘I’m next, OK, this is it,” she said. (It turned out that the police officer only wanted a bribe, she said.) “That whole scene, and that sort of visceral relief, replayed through my head when I read the headlines, and when I saw the post.”

Trump’s campaign stood by his statement, saying that “anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud.”

Trump’s comments were a topic of conversation at the hotel in Detroit last week where hundreds of election officials from around the country, representing both major parties, gathered for the annual conference of their main professional association. There, the mundane work of these government workers contrasted sharply with the picture of partisan lawlessness often painted by Trump and his allies.

Officials attended sessions and luncheons about the intricacies of running complex elections. Awards were given for offices that had figured out ways to eliminate lines or schedule poll worker shifts.

Dozens of graduates of a certification program stood and recited an oath to honor the principles of their profession, such as upholding the Constitution and all laws, maintaining the “highest level of integrity” and protecting public office from partisan gain.

Choate said he worried that too many Americans did not see this part of his work. Just before the conference, he had to report a threat to the FBI after a voter he had been emailing with for years suddenly suggested that he be executed for treason.

“They are treating or talking about us like we’re not real people with kids and dogs and homes,” Choate said. “It’s easy to pick on us when you don’t think of us as human.”